October

We began October with a trip to the South. Dave had a good friend from Westmont that was marrying a girl from Mississippi so we headed down there for that. We flew into New Orleans and stayed there for a couple of days before we drove up to Mississippi for the wedding. As a lot of you know Dave & I had been to New Orleans a couple of years ago with our church to help with some rebuilding efforts. It was interesting to see how far the city had come since we were there. It definitely looked much better, but there is still work to be done. We still saw a lot of abandoned places with the "X"s on the front that rescuers had used after Katrina to mark what/who they had found in the house. And then there is a lot of improvement too, as the picture below shows. It is a part of the Lower Ninth where Habitat for Humanity is building places for musicians in the area.

(Dave is going to write about the rest of the trip - here he goes):

The wedding was a lot of fun and it was good to see a lot of good friends we hadn't seen in a couple years. Emma enjoyed playing outside at the mansion the wedding was at until we were advised not to let her play in the grass because of the chiggers. Just ask Jenn how fun getting bitten all over by those guys was! While in Mississippi we went to Vicksburg National Military Park and drove through the park. We also went to the Coca Cola Museum where the first bottle of Coke was bottled (A lot less interesting than we thought).

Pictures of the mansion where the wedding was (the cannon ball was shot into the house during a battle many years ago and there it remains):

Emma dancing with Daddy at the wedding:

Emma shooting the canon that was on a recovered sunken ship in the military museum:

Then we drove back to New Orleans in time for me to miss going to the Saints game and just hung out in the city. The flight back was pretty miserable since we didn't get back to Ontario until after midnight New Orleans time and Emma decided not to sleep at all on the flights. All in all though, it was a wonderful trip and Emma had a lot of fun too!

All of us at Cafe Du Monde for beignets & iced coffee:

And then we ended October with Halloween. Emma got to be Tigger this year ('cause she loves him so much)!! The day before Halloween she got dressed up and went trick-or-treating at Dave's office. She had so much fun and was sooooo cute. She walked around to all the offices with her bucket and collected all the candy she could get.

Our new house up in Idyllwild was ready for us a few days before Halloween, so we headed up there to participate in some festivities and spend our first night in our new house. The whole town shuts down and all the kids parade down the street and collect candy. Emma has fun, but it was a bit overwhelming with all the people. She was still really cute though. :)

It was a fun month and now we're onto November - yeah I'm almost caught up!! :)

September

Well, I didn't get the blog updated like I had hoped to last month so I am going to do it now. We have been amazingly busy lately and there just hasn't been time for it. But we are in Seattle now for Thanksgiving and I have some extra time so I am going to get it caught up. I figure I'll just post one update for each month and be sure and give you guys all of the details of our life lately. :)

Labor Day: As I am sitting her trying to think what we did for Labor Day, nothing comes to mind. If I remember correctly, we just had a relaxing time around the house. We haven't had too many of those weekends the last several months, so I'm sure it was some much needed down time.

Sometime in the middle of September (I think) we decided that we were going to make a move up to the mountains. The lease on our house is up at the end of November, and with Dave's pay cuts we can't afford to live where we are currently. We also despise the desert for 5/6 months out of the year when it is miserably hot and we thought it might be fun to make the move to somewhere a bit cooler - where Emma can play outside! :) Here are a couple pictures of the new house:

We are very excited about our new house but it has made the last several months very busy! It's a lot of fun trying to pack a house with a little toddler running around. :) We moved all of our furniture up there a couple of weeks ago, but we are far from being our of our house in the desert. When we get back from Seattle we are expecting a couple of VERY busy days before we have to be out of the house on Dec. 1.

I think those are the main highlights for September so we will move onto Oct...